TrueLayer launches completely free charity donation platform using Open Banking

TrueLayer, a leading provider of financial APIs, has launched a new donation application called Donate Direct. It is one of the first of its type to run on Payment Initiation technology.

Currently, technical solutions for charities either charge a monthly subscription fee or take a percentage, often between 1% and 3%, of total donations made. This can amount to hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in lost donations.

TrueLayer has made Donate Direct entirely free to use for charities. By using Payments Initiation, which enables donations to be made directly from online banking without the need for credit or debit cards, donations clear in minutes instead of days and the entire process is underpinned by the bank’s security. Transaction fees, which are substantially lowered by Payment Initiation, will then be completely covered by TrueLayer. As a result, any charity can sign up to use the platform to accept donations and will get up and running in a matter of hours. This all but eliminates the need for charities to rely on expensive third-party donation or payments technology.

The idea for the platform came from TrueLayer’s Payments Product Lead George Davis, and it was then built by TrueLayer in under a week.

Shefali Roy, COO of TrueLayer, said: “We hope this platform can provide some help to charities. They have been hit hard by the crisis just when they are needed the most. By cutting out transaction fees, we’re making sure 100% of donations go to good causes and by using our Payments API for payment initiation using bank to bank rails, donations are fully secure, and clearance is faster.

“We asked our team to come up with ways we can help people on the frontline of the crisis and have been thrilled with the response. They worked tirelessly to get Donate Direct up and running in only a few days. We’re also very happy to match up to £10,000 worth of donations made through Donate Direct.

“I’d also like to thank Profusion who helped advise us on approaching the charities that we were able to onboard – without their help, we wouldn’t have been able to turn this around so quickly”

Luke Wiechula, Corporate Partnerships Officer at FareShare, said: “We are doing everything we can to continue to deliver food to vulnerable people during the crisis. Our service has never been more important, which is why we really welcome Donate Direct. By cutting out admin and transaction costs, it will enable all of the donations we receive to go directly to supporting the people who need it the most.”

Any charity that wants to use Donate Direct should contact hello@truelayer.com.

Payment Initiation is a new means of online payment mandated by EU regulations called PSD2 – the European companion to the UK’s Open Banking legislation.